


bruise like a peach

by babypapaya



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Conversations, Domestic Fluff, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29348727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babypapaya/pseuds/babypapaya
Summary: “I think…” Lewis buys a moment for thought with a sip of coffee, presses his lips together. “I think we’re really lucky. I think everyone gets one chance for that… you know, storybook perfection in their lives.”Lewis and Sebastian sit around their house with various hot drinks and contemplate retirement, expectations, and how to keep learning about the person you already know best.
Relationships: Lewis Hamilton/Sebastian Vettel
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44
Collections: F1 Soup Kitchen Chocolate Box 2021





	bruise like a peach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flamingosarepink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingosarepink/gifts).



> happy valentine's day, Avi! this stretched me so much to explore a new dynamic. I'm not sure where it went but I hope it's the fluff you wanted, and massive thanks to everyone else who helped me wrangle with these two to make this fic into what it is. this wasn't supposed to be multi-chaptered but life has decreed it such and the rest is well on the way <3
> 
> title from Watsky - The Price of Growing Up

The way Lewis sees it, marriage doesn’t really change a man. The moment before the ring goes on is no different from the one right after, nor the one a year, or two, or five, later. You’re the same person, the same thoughts locked in your head and the same skill held in your fingertips, you’re just supposed to share now. Still the same person, who can make the same old mistakes. But hopefully you like the person who put the ring on your finger, so the next part should be easy.

Marriage is a circumstance. A circumstance throws you into events. The reactions chosen to those events are what really change you.

You create habits, clearing time and space from the corners of your day to exist around someone else, _your_ someone else, and you find peace in the repetition. And in creating the plural you, it carves away at the singular you, and then you (singular, and plural) have got rituals.

This, right here, five years later, is more of a ritual than a conscious choice. 

Lewis doesn’t particularly care for coffee. Sebastian doesn’t either, but it just feels like a thing you do: you sit on the back porch steps before breakfast when the mornings are warm, you let the day’s young sunlight kiss you on the cheek, and you drink your coffee like a proper adult. So they’ve got coffee, like proper adults. 

The back garden is greening by the day, and the chickens are out in their pen, the vegetable garden visible just beyond a low fence. The paint on the little barn is looking a bit rough after the last winter, the peeling visible even from the house. They’ll have to paint it this year, Lewis thinks idly, maybe they should try a different colour. He wonders how Sebastian will feel about white—

“And the strawberries should start to produce this year, too,” Sebastian is saying, when Lewis blinks and zones into the monologue going on above his head. He’s sitting on the step below Sebastian, nested between Seb’s thighs just closely enough to lean back against his chest. The mug in his hands keeps them warm, the morning chill barely sharp enough to be felt. He should have brought a sweater.

Sebastian nudges him with a knee and Lewis tips his head back to look up at him. “What do you want to do with them?”

“The strawberries?”

“You’re not listening,” Sebastian chastises, but the grin says he doesn’t mean it. He takes an obligatory sip of coffee and reaches to touch Lewis’s cheek with mug-warmed fingertips. 

“I dunno, make jam, probably. Otherwise we’ll be eating them every day for weeks.”

“Jam.” Sebastian considers this. 

_“I_ like jam.”

“I do too, but it’s not something I’ve done before.”

Lewis shrugs. “First time for everything, we can figure it out.”

Sebastian’s snort is inelegant but tells Lewis everything he needs to know. He twists around and looks his blatantly forlorn partner in the eyes. “This is a mighty long breakdown for you to be having over a batch of muffins you forgot to put salt in four _days_ ago.”

“I’ve made muffins before.” He rubs his face, looking so ancient and beleaguered that Lewis is hard-pressed not to laugh. “What went wrong?”

Lewis turns away again and cups both hands around his coffee mug. “You forgot the salt, and it’s not the end of the world.”

“It feels like a bad omen.”

“About _strawberry jam,_ months from now?”

“If it doesn’t work it’ll just have been such a waste, you know?”

“Come on, why wouldn’t it work?”

Sebastian is silent long enough that Lewis has to elbow his knee.

“It’s alright to be bad at things, you know.”

“I’m _bad_ at being bad at things.”

“It’s fine to do an okay job and just be happy for having tried, that’s all,” Lewis says, and his tone is somber but the smile is audible in his voice. He tips his head back against Sebastian’s chest, and Sebastian squeezes his shoulder gently. Lewis leans into the touch. “Besides.”

“Yeah?”

Sebastian groans. “It’s just such negligence. It’s not me.”

“You don’t have to be some baking prodigy,” Lewis teases, and he feels the grumble in Sebastian’s chest rather than hearing it. “You already got your prodigy opportunity.”

Sebastian squeezes his shoulder again. “I really got used to it, I think.” He pauses. “Even when I wasn’t doing well, I could tell myself I was still at the top because I was with other people who were.”

“It’s like…” Lewis searches for the words. “I know how it feels; you get high expectations for yourself in every regard. Like you’re owed competence. Not other people’s, just your own.”

A dust-brown sparrow flits through the air across the yard, and somewhere in the back of Lewis’s brain, he makes a note to check the bird feeders. Sebastian doesn’t say anything, so he continues. 

“But I mean, if you have to actually try hard to be a domestic goddess, I think that’s just you being normal for once.”

“Do you think that’s how it works?”

“I think…” Lewis buys a moment for thought with a sip of coffee, presses his lips together. “I think we’re really lucky. I think everyone gets one chance for that… you know, storybook perfection in their lives.”

“Surely not handed to you, though,” Sebastian says, and Lewis smiles. A few years ago the smile might have been grim, but now it’s just soft.

“Not that, but there’s this point. Where things align, the people around you, the work you put in yourself, the luck floating around in the cosmic—” Lewis waves a hand. “It comes together for you. For me. And some of us are really lucky…” he trails off.

“And become the face of an entire sport for a decade,” Sebastian adds drily.

Lewis pats his knee. “I was trying not to say that. But we’re lucky, and our, you know, moment of perfection lasted a pretty long time. But everyone gets _one._ Then you’re on your own, and you can mess up as much as you want. But it’s not that bad, not at all.”

“If I keep finding new ways to be bad at the same thing—”

“—then that’s just an impressive bit of improvisation, isn’t it?”

Sebastian sighs, then nods. Lewis can’t see it, but he can feel the nudge of a knee against his ribs and he know it’s the same thing.

“While we’re at it,” Sebastian starts, then stops. 

“What’s up?”

There’s a faint liquid noise as Sebastian swirls the drink in his mug. “You’re _terrible_ at making coffee.”

Lewis sighs. “I _know.”_ He taps fingernails on the rim of his own mug, then in disgust, dumps the dregs in his mug into the grass below him. “You don’t have to trust _that_ process if you don’t want to.”

Sebastian laughs and warmth unspools in Lewis's chest. "Same way of being bad at the same thing," he teases, but he puts his mug down too and reaches for Lewis's hand. "You're nothing if not consistent."

**Author's Note:**

> there is truly no plot! they just sit and talk! vibes only <3


End file.
